The Last Punisher: A SEAL Team Three Sniper's True Account of the Battle of Ramadi

The Last Punisher is a bold, no-holds-barred first-person account of the Iraq War. With wry humor and moving testimony, Kevin Lacz tells the story of his tour in Iraq with SEAL Team Three, the warrior elite of the navy. This legendary unit, known as The Punishers, included Chris Kyle (American Sniper), Mike Monsoor, Ryan Job, and Marc Lee. These brave men were instrumental in securing the key locations in the pivotal 2006 Battle of Ramadi, told with stunning detail in this book.

Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor

In 2009 Clinton Romesha of Red Platoon and the rest of the Black Knight Troop were preparing to shut down Command Outpost Keating, the most remote and inaccessible in a string of bases built by the US military in Nuristan and Kunar in the hope of preventing Taliban insurgents from moving freely back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Three years after Keating's construction, the army was finally ready to concede what the men on the ground had known immediately: It was simply too isolated and too dangerous to defend.

By Honor Bound: Two Navy SEALs, the Medal of Honor, and a Story of Extraordinary Courage

In April of 1972, SEAL Lieutenant Tom Norris risked his life in an unprecedented ground rescue of two American airmen who were shot down behind enemy lines in North Vietnam, a feat for which he would be awarded the Medal of Honor - an award that represents the pinnacle of heroism and courage. Just six months later, Norris was sent on a dangerous special reconnaissance mission that would take his team deep into enemy territory. On that mission they engaged a vastly superior force.

The unforgiving Afghan winter settled upon the 22 men of Marine Special Operations Team 8222, call sign Dagger 22, in the remote and hostile river valley of Bala Murghab, Afghanistan. The Taliban fighters in the region would have liked nothing more than to once again go dormant and rest until the new spring fighting season began. No chance of that - this winter would be different.

Way of the Reaper: My Greatest Untold Missions and the Art of Being a Sniper

Way of the Reaper is a step-by-step accounting of how a sniper works, through the lens of Irving's 10 most significant kills - none of which have been told before. Each mission is an in-depth look at a new element of eliminating the enemy, from intel to luck, recon to weaponry. Told in a thrilling narrative, this is also a heart-pounding true story of some of the Reaper's boldest missions, including the longest shot of his military career on a human target of over half a mile.

Pale Horse is the remarkable never-before-told true story of an army aviation task force during combat in the Afghan War, told by the commanding officer who was there. Set in the very valleys where the attacks of 9/11 were conceived and where 10 Medals of Honor have been earned since that fateful day the war began, the narrative races from ferocious firefights and bravery in battle to the quiet moments where the courageous men and women of Task Force Pale Horse catch their breath before they take to the skies again.

Chickenhawk

With more than half a million copies sold, Robert Mason's Chickenhawk is one of the best-selling books ever written about the Vietnam War. Fascinated with flying from a young age, Mason earned his private pilot's license even before graduating high school. He enlisted in the army in 1964 and endured an extremely challenging "weeding out" process in an effort to fly helicopters. Sent to Vietnam, he survived more than 1,000 air combat missions despite the violence and brutality exploding all around him.

The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228

With a postscript describing SEAL efforts in Afghanistan, The Warrior Elite takes you into the toughest, longest, and most relentless military training in the world. What does it take to become a Navy SEAL? What makes talented, intelligent young men volunteer for physical punishment, cold water, and days without sleep?

Zero Footprint: The True Story of a Private Military Contractor's Covert Assignments in Syria, Libya, and the World's Most Dangerous Places

Armored cars, burner phones, top-notch weaponry, and top-secret missions - this is the life of today's private military contractor. Like author Simon Chase, many PMCs were once the world's top military operatives, and since retiring from outfits like US Navy SEAL TEAM Six and the UK's Special Boat Service, they have devoted their lives to executing missions too sensitive for the government to acknowledge. Chase reveals here for the first time the operations too hazardous and politically volatile to be officially sanctioned by his employers.

The Reaper: Autobiography of One of the Deadliest Special Ops Snipers

In the best-selling tradition of American Sniper and Shooter, Irving shares the true story of his extraordinary career, including his deployment to Afghanistan in the summer of 2009, when he set another record, this time for enemy kills on a single deployment. His teammates and chain of command labeled him "The Reaper," and his actions on the battlefield became the stuff of legend, culminating in an extraordinary face-off against an enemy sniper known simply as The Chechnian.

The Mission, the Men, and Me: Lessons from a Former Delta Force Commander

As a commander of Delta Force - the most elite counter terrorist organization in the world - Pete Blaber took part in some of the most dangerous, controversial, and significant military and political events of our time. Now he takes his intimate knowledge of warfare - and the heart, mind, and spirit it takes to win - and moves his focus from the combat zone to civilian life. As the smoke clears from exciting stories about never-before-revealed top-secret missions that were executed all over the globe, listeners will emerge wiser, more capable, and more ready for life's personal victories than they ever thought possible.

Publisher's Summary

Author and former intelligence officer Amy Waters Yarsinske breaks the incredible true story of the first American pilot shot down during the Gulf War - discovered alive 11 years after his own government left him for dead.

On January 16, 1991, Lt. Comdr. Michael Scott Speicher launches from the USS Saratoga, one of 40 F/A-18 Hornets of which only 39 would return. Moments after an assault by an Iraqi MiG-25, Speicher's plane vanished in a fireball over the Baghdad desert. The next day, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell declared Speicher killed in action - the first casualty of the Gulf War.

Two months later, a Kuwaiti secret police colonel claimed he was in the same hospital as a captured American pilot. Over the years, evidence of Speicher's survival continued to emerge, and on January 10, 2001, Speicher was declared missing in action - the first time in history that a U.S. serviceman's status has been changed.

Tracking this explosive story for the past eight years, Yarsinske has interviewed top government and military officials, diplomats, pilots, informers, and Iraqi defectors. The result is a stunning true account of government denials and cover-ups that obscured an essential fact: Speicher actually survived. No One Left Behind takes us beyond the lies to unearth the truth of the pilot left behind.

What the Critics Say

"The entire production [has] a feeling of an overheard conversation between knowledgeable friends, adding a depth of believability and confidence that fancier, more melodramatic treatment might have weakened." (Publishers Weekly) "It amounts to an extraordinary betrayal of the U.S. military's proud boast that 'no man is left behind.'" (The Times (London))

I was excited about starting this book, but I barely made it to the end. It reads like someone's history MA thesis. It's full of detail, that gets repeated many times before the end, but short on actual synthesis. It repeatedly insinuates conspiracy without ever actually accusing anyone. My father, a lifelong bureaucrat, always told me not to assume conspiracy when incompetence is a possible explanation. That pretty much summarizes my take on this episode in American history. I am fully prepared to believe that there were many incompetent bureaucrats involved, but the constant insinuation that everyone actively covered this up because they were afraid it would make them look bad doesn't ring true to me. And to make the book more disappointing, it ends before his body was discovered in 2009, the circumstances of which seem to pretty much disprove the author's thesis.

This book would have been better as a long piece in the New Yorker or some similar outlet. There just isn't enough here to make a compelling and interesting book. Hopefully someone will make an abridged version of it. You can get the whole story in a nutshell by reading the Wikipedia entry.